Alliance Scum!

Well, it has finally come to this. I have started a (semi) serious alliance alt.

Oh, believe me, I've tried it before. I don't think any of my alliance alts have made it past level 15 up till now. I just get so bored of questing with no bags, no mount, no money, that after a few levelups I just end up deleting them to make room for another horde alt. But this time I stuck through with it.

I made a human mage - originally a night elf but ugh, I just can't stand those self-righteous night elves. Same with the dranei - so haughty and smug. I considered gnome but I have to admit they do creep me out, plus gear just looks so ridiculous on them. Worgen was another serious candidate but I decided in the end I wanted to look pretty (don't I already have numerous scary-looking horde characters?) and so I went with a human.

Luckily I had room for another alt on my main's server, so I gathered up all the caster heirlooms I had (which is...all of them - chest, shoulders, cape, hellm, staff, two trinkets) and sent them to her. I couldn't send any bags or money, both of which are kind of crucial in expediting early questing/training, but oh well.

Compared to my very first character's leveling experience, things have been like night and day. Being decked out in great gear right off the bat really trivializes any content below level 10. Within about 10 minutes I was already out of Northshire in search of higher level mobs and quests. Within about 3 hours I had hit level 20 and was scraping together enough gold to purchase a mount!

Things improve SO much when you finally get that mount. No more tedious running everywhere, that mount just makes a world of difference.

Aside from gear another thing that really helped me out was my general experience playing the game. I was dirt poor when I made the character about a week ago, and now she's level 34 and already has 250g in her pockets. Even questing in a low level zone you pick up things here and there - maybe a tailoring recipe, cooking ingredients, some cloth or a couple gems - that you would've just vendored had you not known better. For instance when I had a stack of wool cloth instead of making bandages (I can always go back later to get my first aid skill up when I had plenty of money) I sold it for 15g each. When I got a stack of clam meat (always in high demand to raise cooking skill), instead of using it myself I just sold it for 20g and farmed other mats to raise my cooking. It was little things like that here and there that really helped out - 20g can buy you a few 12-slot bags, and you have no idea how nicer they are than the 6 slot ones.

And then of course when I got my professions started I made even more money. I think inscription is definitely the way to go for a new alt, unless you just got for two gathering professions. But my, that gets so boring very quickly. There is just not as much fun or satisfaction on simply mining, gathering, skinning over and over without making something out of it. Any gathering profession is always a money-maker, whereas the production professions require some strategy to actually generate any profit.

Inscription is so economic compared to the other production professions since you can raise your skill levels very easily just by making glyphs. Glyphs require some parchment (cheap from vendors) and a couple of inks (milled from herbs).

Compare that, for instance, with blacksmithing, where in order to raise a few skill points you need several stacks of ores and expensive gems, sometimes even random things like cloth or leather. Even after spending all those resources to craft something, you normally end up just vendoring or throwing out all the crafted items because the AH is usually so flooded with random low-level green items, and most people just rely on quest rewards or dungeons to gear up anyways. It's not until you start crafting level 85 stuff that you'll make any money.

But glyphs, if you make the right glyphs, will sell for quite a bit. The popular glyphs sell for 50-100g, which is very good given that all it cost you was a parchment and a couple of inks. Of course the trick is knowing which glyphs sell well and which don't, and figuring it out may take a few trips to the auction house or some trial and error.

Not to mention all the other nice perks inscription gets you: you can make darkmoon cards, which always sell for a few gold or if you can make a whole deck yourself, will sell for ten times that. You can make scrolls to buff yourself at very low cost. You can make scrolls of recall which is basically a second set of hearthstones, a very handy feature when you're leveling and have to do a lot of going back-and-forth to turn in quests and whatnot.

Ah, this topic has been derailed. Enough about inscription, back to my mage. Despite my hatred for casting delays, it actually hasn't been that bad. I chose frost so I could get good survivability and I've put talent points into reducing as much casting delay as possible, which has helped. I can wait through a 1.2 sec cast frostbolt, which will usually take a mob down to half its health. Then arcane missiles will usually pop, finishing off the mob. Otherwise I just ice-lance (instant cast!) the mob to death. If it gets close, I frost nova (another instant cast) and blink away. I generally cast nothing else.

I realize that I'm wearing so many heirlooms that mobs die quickly and quests are a breeze. This is fine with me - I don't have anyone to keep pace with and now that I have experienced the ally starting zone, I'm not interested in spending hours doing all the same quests I did as horde. I might try my hand at pvp once I'm high level. Or maybe I'll just faction switch once I hit 85. Or I could always have a high level alliance alt standing by to gank fellow hordies I don't like!